222 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



COW PEAS, SOY BEANS AND WINTER VETCH. 



BY J. D. TOWAR. 



Bulletin 199 — Agricultural Department. 



SUMMARY. 



1. Cow peas, soy beans and winter vetch are successful new legumes for Michigan 

 and give promise of valuable usefulness as feeds and green manure. 



2. Cow peas are tender, succulent, vinelike plants and must be grown between the 

 periods of frosts. 



3. In general, cow peas will grow best when sown in rows, using one-half bushel to 

 three pecks of seed per acre. 



4. Soy beans are a little more hardy than cow peas, growing with stiff, erect stalks, 

 but treated like cow peas. 



5. Winter vetch may be sown either in the spring or fall. Its behavior is much like 

 field peas. 



6. Cow peas may be used for fall pasture for hogs and other stock. 



7. Soy beans ripen their seed and shed their leaves as soon as frosts come. The seeds, 

 being very rich in protein and fat, give promise of becoming a substitute for linseed 

 and cotton-seed-meal. 



8. Winter vetch, seeded in the spring, makes excellent fall pasture, which remains 

 green through the winter. 



9. Winter vetch as a substitute for clover has been grown best by seeding in the fall, 

 using a half bushel of w T heat and half bushel of vetch, cutting the whole in the middle 

 of June for hay. 



10. Cow peas and winter vetch make excellent green manure, and as such give best 

 returns if plowed under when near the mature state. Either, sown in the summer in 

 the orchard, will make a good cover crop for winter. 



COW PEAS, SOY BEANS AND WINTER VETCH. 



With HellriegePs discovery in 1888 that the leguminous plants through microor- 

 ganisms on their roots were capable of assimilating nitrogen from the soil atmosphere, 

 came at once great prominence to crops of this family as soil improvers and stock 

 feeds. By assimilating nitrogen from this source these plants furnish ammonia for 

 fertilizer and albuminoids or protein as feed for our animals without depleting the 

 fertility of the soil. It is, therefore, highly important that members of the leguminous 

 family be given a prominent place in the list of crops grown on the farm, be the purpose 

 for which they are grown whatever it may. A complete list of the leguminous plants 

 contains all of the clovers, luzernes, peas, beans, vetches, lupins, serradella, peanuts 

 and a large number of other plants, including many trees and shrubs. The cow 

 peas, soy beans and winter vetch come within this family, and have so many prominent 

 characteristics as soil renovators and stock feeds that they promise to be generally 

 adopted as economical forage and green manuring crops for the State of Michigan. 

 A glance at the analyses of these legumes and a number of other of our common crops 

 grown for similar purposes, in the table below, will at once give the reader an idea 

 of their economic importance. 



In considering these feeding values, we look first to the digestible protein, then the 

 digestible carbohydrates, and ether extract. The protein is determined by multiplying 

 the percentage of nitrogen by 6*4. The digestible protein and carbohydrates are ascer- 

 tained by using a factor of digestibility determined by experiments performed either 

 by the chemist or by actual experiments with domestic animals. The ether extract 

 or fat is converted to the basis of carbohydrates by multiplying by a factor ranging 

 from 2^4 to 2y 2 , and then added to the digestible carbohydrates. Then the ratio 

 between the digestible protein and digestible carbohydrates and fat is known as the 



